"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The porter shut it with a clang.
The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.
"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps be able to say something to help."
CHAPTER XV
Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea, which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen, the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress, a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease working.
"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."